


and burned into the dark

by McSpot



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Calgary Flames, Goalie Nesting, M/M, gratuitous use of nicknames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 00:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McSpot/pseuds/McSpot
Summary: Elias knew what a nesting goalie looked like.He just never expected to end up nesting with one himself.





	and burned into the dark

**Author's Note:**

> This ill-advised fic was inspired entirely by [this gif](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/post/181675168044), which convinced me to write 13k of a trope I've never written before for a pairing I just made up on a team I don't follow. Inspiration is a hell of a thing. (Also, David Rittich is a gem and everyone should love him.)
> 
> As per usual with my fics this has been minimally edited and largely written while half-asleep so I'm sure there are some typos. You've been warned.
> 
> Title chosen with thirty seconds of consideration from "Something From Nothing" by the Foo Fighters, because lol Flames/fire/GET IT?

Elias knew what a nesting goalie looked like.

Well, he mostly knew. It wasn't like they nested every year, so he hadn't seen it too often - or more than once, to be fair.

Cam never nested very much in Carolina - the press claimed that he didn't feel comfortable enough to do it, or that he was out injured too often for his body to get into the right biological rhythms for it. Cam had always called them ignorant fucks and said that they failed to understand that goalies who were comfortable where they were didn't need to nest.

The whole reason for nesting, after all, was to make a place for yourself on your team, assert your ownership of the crease. Veteran goalies who'd played with the same team for years rarely felt the urge to nest, unless the team experienced some sort of chronic dysfunction - and even Carolina's brand of dysfunction hadn't been enough to set Cam off.

Elias wondered if he'd nested in Chicago.

The point was, even if Elias never saw Cam nest in all the years they'd played together, he'd still seen Eddie Läck do it. It had been when he'd first joined the team in 2015, the stress of moving to a new city and learning a new team and something to do with Luongo that Elias hadn't wanted to touch with a ten foot pole.

Eddie's nesting was easy, but that was really par for the course with Eddie. Eddie's version of nesting really did just involve making a nest and sitting in it. It had looked almost comfortable, a spare net that he'd dragged into the players' lounge, stuffed full of blankets and pillows and every jersey he set his eyes on. The whole thing was bracketed by his pads, and Cam's, when he could get his hands on them. Eddie just sat in the whole thing, the only visible part of him his helmet as he peered out at the room.

It turned out that a lot of goalies went borderline nonverbal when they nested, and Eddie was no different. He mostly just whined and made grabby hands when people walked by because he wanted them to come sit with him for a while. They all took turns doing it, even Elias, and it really wasn't so bad. Granted, being packed under a bunch of blankets with your goaltender was a little disgustingly sweaty, but it was a better alternative to when Eddie's nesting first began and he tried to skate around the ice during practice, collecting up his teammates and doing his damnedest to fit them all in his net.

They brought him tacos because he made happy sounds when they did, and when he refused to leave the arena they made sure someone stayed overnight with him so he wouldn't be sad. (There was a complicated selection system as to who had to stay overnight, based on important things like tenure, age, if you had kids at home, and also  _rookies have to take one for the team, Hanny_.)

Thankfully Eddie had the good grace to start nesting during a home stand, and so after three days of nesting and thankfully just one game of trainers holding him in his seat next to the bench to keep him from lunging onto the ice whenever the puck went past, Eddie was back to his regular self. Which, to be entirely honest, wasn't too different from how he behaved while he nested, except he was a lot chattier.

He still hung off his teammates like a koala, but that was really just Eddie.

That was the first and only time Elias had seen a goalie while they nested, seeing as Scottie was like, way too chill to need to nest. And given that it was really more of a quirk than a team-shattering issue, he didn't see why everyone on the Flames acted like they'd just been told the franchise was being moved to Alaska when one of the trainers broke the news that Ritter was probably going to start nesting soon.

"We're not trying to freak anyone out," he'd said immediately, putting his hands up as if to push back the sudden wave of horrified expressions. "Ritter's getting checked over by the doctor just to be sure, but his temperature's running a bit hot and he's showing some signs of heightened arousal-"

There were more than a few snickers, and he really should have known better than to use that word.

"-and we just want to make sure everyone's prepared in the event that he does start nesting. You guys know the drill. Everything's normal until we say otherwise, give him his space, don't crowd him in the crease – all the things you should be doing anyway. You respect him and he'll respect you, and everyone will be fine."

Elias didn't know why they'd even needed to have this conversation, but he understood even less why everyone around him was shifting around and muttering nervously like soldiers in a war film who were just told they were heading into battle.

"Respect his space, yeah," Nealer snorted derisively. "That worked with Pekka, if you kept enough distance. But Flower fucking  _chases_."

Fro shook his head with the eyes of someone who had seen too much. "I love Ondřej but he  _bites_ and the Jets always made me get him off the ice because he still bit me but not so much."

"Miikka bit." Gio grimaced like he'd already resigned himself to his fate of a repeat performance. "He threw shit, too. Clocked Phaneuf right in the face with a stick once. Miikka threw it like a javelin, if he didn't have a helmet on he'd have had more than a black eye."

Smitty laughed, and the whole room seemed to freeze in horror. Hanny nudged Elias with his elbow and made a quizzical face; Elias shrugged.

"That's rough," Smitty was saying. He was the only one who looked at ease. "I usually just glare at people and posture a lot. Louis Domingue used to lunge at guys that got too close to him. He was just doing it to scare them but nobody ever believed me, so I always had to be the one to calm him down because he wouldn't do it to me."

He smiled loosely. "It's been a few years since I've been around another goalie while they're nesting, so this should be interesting."

The rest of the guys did not look nearly so enthused.

"Can't one nesting goalie like...set off another?" Mony asked. "Like, don't your cycles sync up or something?"

Matty did them all a favor and slapped him upside the head.

"Ow! Dude, what the fuck?"

"That's not how it works, dumbass," Matty hissed, like if he spoke too loud he'd jinx it and Smitty would immediately start nesting just to spite him.

"Okay, but like, why's everyone so freaked out?"

And really, one of the best parts about being traded with Noah, other than having a built-in friend on his new team, was that he asked the possibly-dumb questions so that Elias didn't have to.

Gio looked at him oddly. He wasn't the only one.

"You guys probably haven't seen a nesting goalie before," he said.

Hanny scoffed, and Elias felt like he had that right, given what he'd gone through.

"Uh, no, I've seen one. I had to spend the night sleeping in a net with one to keep him company. It was hot as fuck and I sweated my balls off, and I had to keep trying to encourage him to leave the nest to like, drink some water and take a piss, but it wasn't this horror movie shit you guys are talking about."

No less than three of their teammates made sounds not dissimilar to a cat choking up a hairball.

Smitty looked stunned. "He let you  _sleep in the net_?"

"It was Eddie Läck. He got lonely if you left him alone too long; all he wanted was someone to sit in his nest with him. I was the rookie so I had to stay overnight with him one night because he refused to leave the nest, and yeah, he made me sleep in the net and that's an experience I never want to repeat, I'll give you that. It's fucking hell on your back, no matter how many blankets you have."

The way that their teammates were staring at Hanny was the same expression one would give to a toad that had an unexpected talent in tap dance.

"But he let you  _in the net_ ," Smitty repeated, like this was somehow the most shocking part of it.

The next thing he knew Elias heard himself saying, "He pushed everyone into the net. It took forever to get him off the ice the first day because he kept trying to fit the whole team in his net. He got all frustrated that every time he turned around someone had tried to leave."

"He wanted you  _all_  in the net?" Elias hadn't known Smitty's voice got that high.

After a moment, Gio shrugged. "It's Eddie, it wouldn't be too surprising if he did everything backwards."

Noah was frowning now. He always did hate feeling out of the loop. "How's it backwards to want to bond with your team? Isn't that the whole point of why goalies nest in the first place?"

The number of guys who laughed at that did nothing to alleviate Noah's irritation, and now even Elias was starting to feel a little pissed off.

From the look on Gio's face he was clearly trying very hard to be diplomatic. "Uh, a little bit, yeah. But a lot of times it's more like..."

He trailed off and looked at Smitty for explanation.

Smitty sighed through his nose. "It's usually about asserting dominance. Forcing everyone to acknowledge your role on the team,  _making_  them make a spot for you. It's all instinctual, we have little to no control over ourselves, and for a lot of guys...sometimes those instincts to protect the net can get a little...aggressive."

"Don't get near a nesting goalie is like Hockey 101," Nealer said. "You never know how they're going to react. They don't care who you are, when you're near their crease, you're near their crease, and they'll do whatever they can to get rid of you. Fuck, look at Fro, his best friend  _bit him_  because he was nesting."

"Just a little, not too bad," Fro said, but the fact that he could roll up his sleeve and point out the visible white scars where Pavelec's canines had sunk in too deep on his forearm was more than a little freaky.

The whole thing was more than a little freaky. Part of Elias was inclined to believe it was all just some sort of elaborate team-wide prank on him and Hanny, try to convince the new guys that nesting goalies are borderline feral monsters who want to rip your skin off, won't that be so funny?

Except the guys weren't very good actors, and the training staff would never go along with a prank like that, and Ritter still wasn't back from seeing the doctor.

Elias swallowed compulsively.

"Well. What does Ritter do when he nests?"

And wasn't that the question of the hour. Nobody seemed to have an answer for that, seeing as Ritter evidently hadn't nested in the two years he'd been in the organization, and yet they all kept looking at each other like someone would come out with the answer if they just stared hard enough.

"What's going on?"

Elias wasn't proud to say that he flinched when Ritter came into the room, but Johnny actually yelped, so he didn't feel so bad.

Smitty was the first to recover, or maybe he'd been fine the whole time. Goalies always were weird like that.

"Hey man, how are you feeling?" He clapped Ritter on the shoulder. It looked particularly dad-like, or maybe it was just because he was one of the few guys on the team who could make a guy as big as Ritter look small.

"Good. What you guys doing?"

Everyone was back to staring uncomfortably at each other, or suddenly becoming extremely interested in the floor.

Elias would have joined them, but he was too busy trying to peer over at Ritter out of the corner of his eye. He didn't look any different. Maybe a little flushed, but they all looked that way after warming up – which is what they were supposed to be doing, before everyone had started freaking out. Otherwise he looked normal, smiling a little bemusedly as he surveyed his teammates.

And then his eyes landed on Elias's, and his breath caught in his throat.

Because that was... _not_  what Ritter's eyes usually looked like.

It only lasted a moment, so short that Elias would have thought he'd imagined it if it hadn't been so intense, so physically arresting that he'd wanted to take a step back to protect himself.

There was something else behind Ritter's eyes, something foreign and wild, and for just a moment it had peered back at Elias.

And then Ritter smiled, and everything was normal again.

"Oh, nesting," Ritter said, nodding gamely. "It's okay, boys, I probably will not eat you."

 _"Probably?!"_  The boys couldn't solely blame Johnny for that yelp, considering it was at least three of them.

Ritter winked and went over to his stall to put on his gear for practice, just as he had been before he got pulled aside by the training staff. Clearly he wasn't worried at all about what nesting would mean for the rest of them.

Taking a deep breath, Elias forced himself to relax his shoulders and turn back to his own stall. Ritter was clearly in good spirits about the whole thing if he was teasing them about it, but that's how he addressed most things in life. He probably knew they were all overreacting about nothing and wanted to give them shit for it.

This would be fine. Ritter would be a little weird for a few days, they'd have Smitty start in goal, and then it would all blow over.

There was nothing to be worried about.

He told himself that over and over throughout practice, trying to pretend that it didn't feel like someone's gaze was tracking his every movement.

~~~

It was easy to calm down when a few days went by with nothing happening. Things were stunningly normal, actually. They played in Edmonton and Ritter was able to start in net. He was maybe a little more amped up than normal, but that could also just be Ritter. He always was a passionate guy.

And then they came in for practice the day after the game, and something in the air was... _off_.

At first Elias thought he imagined it, that faint tension in the room, because everyone was acting normal. Guys were chirping Johnny for his shitty diet, Nealer was spending way too much time fixing his hair just to put a helmet on top of it. Elias was just going through his regular routine warming up on the bikes before they hit the ice for practice.

He'd seen Ritter come in earlier, seen him change clothes and go into his stretches, and maybe he hadn't been as friendly as usual, hadn't said hello to as many people as he normally would, but who was Elias to judge? The day after a loss, he didn't always want to talk a whole lot either.

Everything was going well until Elias came back into the dressing room just in time to see Ritter take a lunge at Mony.

He wasn't even sure what he was seeing at first, wouldn't have put it together so fast if it wasn't for the inhuman  _snarl_  ripping from Ritter's throat that made Elias's hair stand on end.

Ritter was always fast, but Elias had never seen someone move like that before, muscles curled tight before springing forward like a loosened coil. People were shouting, and Mony was just standing there with his eyes wide like he was still trying to process the situation too.

Then Janny and Smitty were hauling Ritter back by his arms, careful to keep behind him because he was fucking growling and gnashing his teeth like he'd be biting if he could. Gio had wrenched Mony to the other side of the room, but that did nothing to get Ritter's stare off of him.

And those eyes...that was what Elias had seen the other day, that flat, alien gaze, pupils blown wide. Absolutely zero recognition.

 _Feral_.

Except this time, Ritter didn't blink it away and come back with a smile.

This time, the foreign creature stayed, angry and agitated and looking like it would like nothing more than to rip someone apart for some unseen slight.

And then, suddenly, Ritter's head tilted to the side and he breathed in, nostrils flaring, like he was trying to fucking scent the room, even though Elias was mostly sure that goalies didn't have some sort of superhuman sense of smell.

But maybe they did, because Ritter sniffed a few more times, taking deep gulps of air, and his head snapped towards Elias lingering just inside the doorway and he  _growled_.

It was low and rough and fucking loud, a gravelly purr like the hum of an engine, and Elias swore he could feel it vibrating through his bones, startling a gasp from his mouth.

He faltered back a step, and the growling cut out.

The silent room was almost worse.

Having Ritter's animal stare pinned unerringly on him was definitely worse.

Janny and Smitty were exchanging glances and tensing, ready to pull Ritter back again if he lunged. But Ritter wasn't straining or pulling. He wasn't moving at all.

He was just watching Elias watching him, and his eyes flashed a keen spark of something Elias couldn't name.

Then Ritter stretched like he was coming out of a long nap, moving against the hands gripping him to lengthen his spine and crack his neck, and then he fucking  _winked_  at Elias and turned towards his stall.

The other two let him go out of sheer surprise, but Smitty remained hovering over him as Ritter began to pull on his pads like nothing had happened.

"What the fuck?" Matty breathed, giving voice to what they were all thinking.

Some of the guys slowly went back to their routines, casting nervous glances in Ritter's direction.

Elias felt frozen in place, like his bones had turned to ice, or maybe melted out of him. All he could do was stare in Ritter's direction, even as Smitty blocked his view.

Noah was at his side, trying to nudge him towards his own stall, but Elias didn't really come back to himself until Gio was standing in his face, close enough to block any view of the room behind him.

"Are you okay?" he asked, even though they all knew that Elias wasn't hurt. Ritter hadn't been anywhere near him. He had just...stared.

And growled.

"Yeah." Words felt thick in his throat, and Elias swallowed around them.

"I'm just..."

Gio's smile was grim, even as he squeezed Elias's shoulder. "It sounds like you guys had it easy with Läck, but now you've seen what most nesting goalies look like. Just...be careful. Singling someone out isn't usually a good thing. It doesn't mean he has anything against you in particular, but sometimes certain things accidentally set off their instincts...just watch your back, got it? And keep your distance."

Elias nodded, because what else could he do? His brain felt foggy, like there was a jump in the tape as he tried to replay the past few minutes, and if he could just see that missing piece he would be able to make sense of the whole thing.

Hanny shoved him over to his stall, and Elias functioned on pure routine as he pulled on his gear.

"That was scary," Johnny hissed. Elias didn't have to be looking at him to know he was casting furtive glances at Ritter.

He would have agreed with Johnny, except his brain still hadn't decided exactly how he felt about the incident.

The logical thing would be to be scared, and Elias was sure that he'd felt pretty fucking scared.

But when he thought about being the subject of that stare, the way that Ritter zeroed in on him...that growl, it hadn't been like when he was going after Mony, it was...

"C'mon boys, get your asses on the ice!" Coach called out.

Whatever. Elias could worry about it later. Right now he had the sweet distraction of practice to take him away.

Except it became quickly apparent that the team was now invoking the "until we say otherwise" clause of "everything's normal."

For one, nobody wanted to be anywhere near Ritter, and the coaching staff quickly agreed with them.

Ritter had skated straight for his net as soon as he'd gone out on the ice, and since then he'd absolutely refused to leave it. He'd spent a good long while scuffing up the crease just as he always did, and then he'd begun some sort of bizarre ritual of checking over the net, which he never did. It involved a lot of patting and fidgeting, and some alien chirping sounds that everyone could hear from across the ice.

Oh, and he started the fucking terrifying snarling any time someone even thought about crossing the blue line into his zone.

He was presently hunkered down in the crease, settled back into the net far enough that most of his body was in there. Prouter had thought it would be funny to send a puck his way, and Ritter had exploded out of the net in a flurry of growls, snatched up the puck in his glove and lobbed it back at him. If he hadn't been wearing his pads, Elias was sure it would have actually hit him.

Coach had blown his whistle then, and everyone except for Ritter gathered around the bench.

"Okay," he said, casting a quick look in Ritter's direction. The low growls could be heard even from this far away. "Change of plans. David is clearly nesting right now, and we're all going to respect that this is something he needs to do. Give him space. I don't want anybody crossing the blue line, nobody shoot pucks in his direction on purpose."

Here he shot a look at Prouter, who only shrugged.

"He wants to settle in there and get comfortable, that's what we're going to let him do. Just pretend that part of the ice doesn't exist and we'll all be fine. Got it?"

They all nodded along, and began trying to work on the mechanics of limiting drills to two thirds of the ice.

Elias was going to join them, when Coach called him back, along with Hanny.

"I want you two to be careful," he said, keeping his voice low. "I know the boys already told you, but other goalies aren't like Eddie when they nest. He's not going to want anyone near him like Eddie did, so you need to keep your distance this time, got it?"

Elias just kept on nodding. It wasn't like he planned to do anything different, not when he could still hear Ritter growling.

They skated over to the rest of the team, Hanny shaking his head the whole time. "Imagine trying to spend the night trapped in a net with  _that_."

Yeah. David Rittich was decidedly not Eddie Läck.

Elias almost could have pretended that practice was normal, if infuriated roars didn't sound every time someone failed to retrieve a wayward puck before it crossed into the other end of the ice. Ritter would come out of his net a little bit now, but only to patrol his crease, lashing his stick restlessly against the ice like the flick of a cat's tail before they pounced. He was on the offense for some sort of threat, but that threat was his own team.

It was fucking beyond him how this was supposed to help him feel more  _secure_  in his team, unless the security came from scaring the shit out of them until they complied with what he wanted.

But Coach diligently dragged them all through practice, acting like there wasn't an infuriated Czech goaltender flinging unwanted pucks at them from the other end of the ice. He just kept right on critiquing their penalty kill, even when a puck bounced solidly off the top of Benny's helmet.

Elias did his best not to look towards that side of the ice, because he didn't want to confirm his suspicions that Ritter was still staring at him. He would never be able to tell, of course, not at that distance with Ritter wearing his mask, but he swore that someone was watching him, and it wasn't just the coaching staff ready to correct his passing.

Maybe he should have looked over there more often, because he didn't notice that Ritter was circling further and further away from his net.

Elias wasn't even at the blue line. He'd been standing near center ice with Johnny and Mony, having to sit out a drill along with a few other guys because their limited space meant only so many groups could practice a drill at once.

He'd actually forgotten that Ritter was there, maybe because the growling had finally stopped for a minute or two. He was watching Janny's line face off against Doc's when he was grabbed by the back of his jersey and yanked backwards, the air startling out of him in a yelp.

His arms pinwheeled and he dropped his stick, expecting to hit the ice, but the grip on his jersey held fast. He tried to regain his balance, but his skates kept slipping against the ice as he was dragged away from his startled linemates.

There was a rolling grumble that sounded almost pleased, and it ran down his spine like ice water.

 _Ritter_.

He could see his teammates take notice, everyone crowding up against the blue line, but they froze there when Ritter snarled again.

Elias went limp, some misplaced survival instinct telling him that he'd make for boring prey if he didn't fight back.

Well. Unless Ritter tried to eat him, but he was fairly sure that goalie nesting didn't go that far.

Ritter didn't care that he was dead weight at all, hauling him up for just a moment before hands were on Elias's chest, shoving him to the ice a little more gently than the move usually warranted.

It all took a matter of seconds, and then Elias was surrounded by white netting on one side and a nesting goalie on the other.

Oh God, he was in the fucking net.

Ritter had his back to him, wasn't paying him any mind at all, even though Elias was crammed into a space that really wasn't meant to have a full-grown hockey player in it. He squirmed around, trying to sit upright, but froze when Ritter growled again.

This close he could feel it crackling through the air, making Ritter's whole body move with it. Elias could hear voices, even if he couldn't see where they were coming from, so he had to assume Ritter was growling at their teammates.

"Lindy, you okay?" Coach's voiced called out.

Elias had to steel himself before he answered, unsure of how Ritter would react to him talking. "Uh, yeah? I think so."

He startled when Ritter's glove hand came back to pat blindly at Elias's legs. Perhaps it was meant to be comforting, but he was still growling. Elias pulled his legs in closer to his chest.

"Hey, Ritter," he heard Smitty say. His voice was pitched softer than normal, like when he was talking to his kids. "You want to give Lindy a bit more room to breathe?"

The growling ratcheted up a notch, and Ritter's body jerked. There was a clatter of something smacking against the ice and a few shouts, and Elias could only surmise that he was trying to hit them with his stick.

Ritter had spread himself wide as if to make himself seem impossibly larger, and he was doing a fantastic job of keeping Elias from seeing what was happening outside the net. But Ritter also couldn't keep Elias pinned in the net while also trying to chase off all of their teammates at once, and so slowly the boys started appearing to the sides of the net, still maintaining a distance, but close enough to see what was going on.

In front of him, Ritter was freaking out, torn between trying to lash out to keep their teammates at bay and creeping further into the net. Well, if he was feeling cornered, Elias was feeling downright fucking claustrophobic.

He turned his head to the side, trying to get some breathing room away from the heat coming off of Ritter's body in waves. He eyed the bottom of the net. Nets were fucking heavy, but running high on adrenaline and fear, it felt like it wouldn't be difficult to just to lift it up off its pegs, shove it forward and scramble out the back of it. In the confusion of trying to get out from under the net Ritter probably wouldn't be able to escape until Elias was already off the ice.

He slipped one gloved hand towards the back of the net, getting ready to flip it forward. Off to the side of the net, Hammer was nodding encouragingly, having followed Elias's movements. Ritter wasn't even paying attention to how close Hammer had gotten to the net, too distracted by the rest of the guys, so Elias would have backup when he made his escape.

Somewhere he couldn't see, Fro was saying something to Ritter in Czech that made the growling quiet down a bit. Elias's hand had just slipped under the back of the net when Ritter suddenly jerked around, trying to look over his shoulder at Elias.

Elias slid his hand behind him as quickly as he could, hoping that Ritter couldn't see it through his mask at a bad angle. He didn't know what Ritter would do to him if he tried to escape – fuck, he didn't know what Ritter was trying to do with him, period. But if everyone else was keeping a distance from him, he didn't want to imagine what would happen to him being trapped up close.

He thought about the teeth marks on Fro's arm and tried to hold back a shudder.

Ritter's eyes were narrowed behind his mask. There was something so  _off_  about that stare, both vacant and intelligent at the same time. Elias didn't know what his own face was expressing, but whatever it was made Ritter's whole countenance soften. He reached out with his glove and touched the side of Elias's face. Elias did his damnedest not to move, not to breathe, but he startled when Ritter emitted some sort of low, bird-like croon.

"Ritter?" he stuttered breathlessly, afraid that speaking too loudly might set him off. Ritter grumbled a little, but it sounded different than the growling he'd been doing before. Less threatening, when combined with the way that Ritter was still trying to awkwardly cup Elias's face with his glove.

Seeing as it didn't look like Ritter was about to maul him in the next few seconds, Elias decided to test his luck. "Do you think I could...maybe get up?"

That was decidedly the wrong thing to say. Ritter's face fell into something unreadable, his growl wounded and angry. Elias flinched, pressing as far back as he could in the small space. Trying to keep his hand behind him, he gripped the bar at the bottom of the net.

As soon as Ritter moved for him, he would flip the net and get the hell out of there.

Except the growl abruptly cut out, and Ritter was back to that strange chirping croon, trying to pet over Elias's face with far too much padding on his hands.

"David," Coach called, and Ritter was clearly torn, trying to glare in Coach's direction while also doing what seemed suspiciously like a bizarre attempt at comforting Elias.

"David, you can stay in the net, but you need to let Elias go."

That got Ritter's full attention, and he turned forward again, smashing his stick angrily against the ice and snarling.

Hammer was gesturing wildly, and Elias took the signal for what it was and shoved the net up and forward with all of his strength.

The net tipped, landing partially on top of Ritter, and Elias scrambled out under the bar before Ritter could push it back down. Ritter's snarl of outrage was bloodcurdling, but Elias couldn't afford to be scared into freezing again. Running on pure instinct and fear, he pushed himself to his feet and sprinted from the net. Hammer was right with him, shoving Elias forward as Ritter howled in anger and tried to pursue them.

But Elias was always going to be faster than any goalie, even one amped up on berserker nesting impulses, and in a matter of seconds he was flinging himself over the boards and jogging down the tunnel.

He didn't look back, but he could hear the noise that Ritter made. It was purely animal, baying with grief and fury.

Elias slumped against a wall, finally letting himself close his eyes and fucking  _breathe_.

He could hear someone approaching him but didn't bother to look. If it was Ritter it would have been a whole lot louder. Anyone else, he didn't care.

"Hey man, are you okay? That was fucking intense."

He cracked one eye open to see Mony. He was panting just as heavily as Elias was, and Elias had to wonder if everyone was being chased off the ice or if Ritter had just retreated to his net to sulk now.

Words seemed a little beyond Elias at that point, but he nodded, swallowing heavily.

They stood there together, watching as each of their teammates came trodding down the hall. Everyone looked varying levels of shell-shocked, but they all still stopped to pat Elias on the head like they were welcoming him back from war.

He counted them off in his head one by one until the only ones missing were Smitty and the coaching staff.

Gio trailed the rest of the group, and when he patted Elias on the head he lingered there to look him over.

"You're sure you're okay?"

Elias took a deep breath and shrugged. "He didn't hurt me. I...I don't know what that was. It wasn't like when Eddie did it."

When Eddie wanted someone to come sit with him he whined a lot until they let him pull them into his nest so he could hug them. And then when they wanted to get up, he'd bitch and moan a lot but he'd let them go, especially if they were going to bring back food or provide him with a replacement to cuddle.

But this whatever-the-fuck that Ritter was doing, willing to attack the team to forcefully keep Elias with him –  _Elias_ , of all people.

It didn't make any fucking sense.

He guessed it showed on his face, or maybe it was just easy enough for Gio to follow his train of thought, because Gio grimaced and put a hand on his shoulder.

"No, he's not like Eddie. But he's not like Miikka either. For whatever reason, he's decided that you're part of his net that he has to protect."

"Lucky me," Elias mumbled. He pulled off his glove so that he could rub at his eyes, suddenly exhausted.

Gio squeezed his shoulder. "Hey, it'll be fine. After you left Ritter just went back to his net. He's having a sulk there now. Smitty and the coaches are going to try to coax him out, get him a net set up in a spare room so that he's got some privacy somewhere safe."

It all sounded good, and was undoubtedly the best course of action, but some part of Elias wanted to wince all the same, thinking about what Gio had said. If Elias was somehow part of Ritter's whole mental equation for a good nest, would he be able to nest comfortably on his own? Or would he be like Eddie was, distraught and miserable without someone there to keep him company?

Nesting had always seemed like such a lonely experience. It was born of loneliness, he'd thought. Everyone said nesting was about confirming your place on a team, but that had to mean you were worried about your place on the team to begin with.

It must be awful, to be insecure enough that your body decided that the best way to make you feel better was to aggressively force yourself onto the team. And even as you "asserted yourself" or whatever Smitty had called it, you were pushing away the very team that you were trying to be a part of.

And then you spent the whole thing alone, just you and your net, proving that it was yours to an empty room or vacant stands.

He'd assumed that Eddie desired company because the very basis of nesting was wanting his team to show him that they wanted and valued his presence. It had seemed so strange, to imagine goalies violently rejecting their teammates when they really wanted their acceptance.

Maybe they all wanted somebody to stay with them, to be by their side. Maybe they just hadn't been able to get through to the right people.

Maybe they didn't think that their teammates would want to stay with them if not by force.

Oh fuck, now he was feeling bad for Ritter.

He thought about the bite marks on Fro's arm again – Fro, the person who Pavelec allegedly liked better than the rest of his team.

It probably wasn't always the best to be a nesting goaltender's "favorite" person.

Elias waved off any of Gio's further concerns and tried to proceed with his post-practice routine. If he hadn't been able to get through it on autopilot, he'd probably have never finished it. As it was, he got lost in thought in the shower and when he snapped back to himself, he had no clue how much time had passed. When he came out, the last few guys were just getting ready to leave the dressing room. Elias exchanged tired nods with them as they left, and then it was just him, toweling off his wet hair and pulling on his street clothes.

He was in such a fog by the time he'd gotten himself dressed and ready to go that he hadn't once stopped to consider if anyone had ever managed to get Ritter off of the ice. He also wasn't considering exactly where they'd try to get Ritter set up.

Elias was still following his routine, and his routine way to exit the building took him past a few trainers' rooms, and in this instance his routine took him straight into the path of the goalie he'd worked so hard to escape.

It took his brain a few seconds to realize what he was seeing. Ritter appeared like a specter, still wearing full gear, skates and all, mask pushed on top of his head. With a start Elias realized that the coaching staff must have gotten him settled in one of the trainers' rooms – and Elias had just disturbed him.

He didn't know what to expect, but after what happened earlier, he knew that Ritter was unpredictable at best. Just because he was the chosen favorite an hour ago didn't mean Ritter would be welcoming his presence now.

When Ritter took a step closer, still watching him with that blank stare, Elias stepped back. Unthinkingly, he snatched up a spare stick leaning against the wall nearby and brandished it between them like he could somehow ward Ritter off.

Ritter just kept staring him dead in the eyes, but Elias would swear that the corner of his mouth tilted up. Ritter came closer again, his eyes fixed on Elias's.

Maintaining eye contact, he bared his teeth as if to snarl. Before Elias could even feel a flash of fear, Ritter slowly, deliberately bit down on the edge of the stick and held it between his teeth.

He never once blinked or moved his eyes. Something hot fluttered down Elias's spine, being held in place by that gaze.

"Ritter?"

There was no way he could mistake the noise Ritter made this time as anything other than the low, pleased growl that he only made for Elias. He moved slowly, telegraphing his movements as he removed his mouth from the stick and carefully plucked it from Elias's grip with his blocker hand. Elias felt like he'd entered a space outside of himself, watching as Ritter set the stick back against the wall where Elias had originally found it and came closer.

They were chest to chest now, Ritter looming over him, impossibly large in full pads and skates when Elias wasn't similarly dressed. Ritter leaned in, bringing their faces together, and the logical part of Elias would have told him to worry about being bitten right about now if the logical part of Elias hadn't taken its leave of him some time ago.

"David?" Elias stuttered, because Coach seemed to think it might work better.

Ritter crooned like he had in the net earlier, and he dragged his nose along the line of Elias's jaw, his helmet bumping up against Elias's cheek. It was clunky and awkward and Elias was still pretty sure that Ritter wouldn't be able to smell anything more meaningful than the soap he'd showered with, and he couldn't help giggling, just a little bit.

It seemed to make Ritter happy, because he bumped his face against Elias's again, a bit more forcefully, like an affectionate cat who didn't know his size.

"Quit it," he laughed, pushing lightly at Ritter's mask. Ritter made that happy chirp again but complied. He put his blocker hand on Elias's waist and gently nudged him backwards.

Elias followed his urging, taking a moment to realize that Ritter was trying to get him into the room that he himself had just exited.

He was suddenly entirely sure that there was a net in there, and that Ritter wanted him to come sit in that net with him so that Ritter could "protect" him.

But Ritter was moving slow, giving him a chance to protest, and Elias felt a lot less nervous about it this time.

"I'll go with you," he began, and he tried not to let the way that Ritter's blank face suddenly fucking  _lit up_  distract him. "Hold on, hold on. I'll go with you, but there are rules. If I want to go, you have to let me go. You can't grab me, or drag me anywhere, or keep me somewhere I don't want to be."

After a moment he added, "And no biting."

He wasn't sure how much Ritter had retained – he wasn't sure how much he even understood right now – but when Ritter playfully snapped his teeth at the end of Elias's nose, he was one hundred percent sure that he was being mocked.

At least Ritter understood that part.

Elias let himself be chivvied along into the room. Sure enough, there was a net set up in one of the corners. It was draped in towels and practice jerseys and a few throw blankets Elias recognized from the player lounge. The net itself was full of more of the same.

It was eerily reminiscent of what Eddie used to do back in Carolina, and Elias felt the need to assert, "You know I'm not going to stay here overnight, right?"

Ritter made a sad noise and nudged him towards the net again, but Elias dug his feet in.

"No, I'm serious. There's no damn way I'm spending the night there. Actually you shouldn't either, it's not good for you."

He was pretty sure that Ritter actually rolled his eyes at him, but Elias couldn't be sure because he'd pulled the mask over his face again. But he didn't seem to be disagreeing, so Elias took it as a win and let himself be pushed towards the net.

Elias sat in the middle of it, leaning back against a couch cushion clearly pilfered from the lounge. It was almost comical watching Ritter fidget around him, using his goalie stick to nudge things around in the nest he'd formed, picking up a practice jersey and carefully draping it over Elias's legs.

"Wow, thanks," Elias said. "You, uh, you think you want to try taking your skates off, bud? Gonna ruin them like this."

This time Ritter pretty clearly dismissed him, continuing to pace about the room, moving things until they were all  _just so_. Every few seconds he'd throw a glance back at his net to check if Elias was still there, and every time he saw him, his shoulders would relax just a bit.

Elias sighed and pulled out his phone, starting to look through the messages he'd missed during practice. If this was really what Ritter needed to have a happy nesting time or whatever, he'd endure it for him.

It wasn't really that bad. Maybe it was because Ritter wasn't nearly as edgy as he'd been on the ice, but it actually wasn't too weird. If you considered that goalies were quirky on a good day, having to sit in a net full of jerseys and linens for a while to appease your goaltender wasn't really so different.

"Hey man, what had you so upset on the ice earlier?" Elias asked. "When you were flipping out at the guys."

He kept his gaze nominally on his phone, but slipped glances at Ritter over top of it. Ritter had slowed in his pacing, but was still tapping his stick rhythmically against the floor.

"Because like...it was pretty scary for a while. I didn't know what was going on, and everybody had all these stories about getting attacked by their goalies when they nested..."

Elias knew enough not to expect an actual verbal response, so he wasn't sure what he was looking for. He wasn't expecting Ritter to come over and all but toss himself in the nest next to Elias, thankfully keeping his skates well away from the nest.

Mildly fascinated, he watched as Ritter propped his stick against the wall and then removed his blocker and glove, setting them carefully at the perimeter of the nest. Then, slowly, he pulled his mask over his head and leaned up to tuck it on top of the net like some weird ornament.

Finally getting a good look at him, Ritter was clearly flushed and damp with sweat, which Elias would have expected from anyone who'd been wearing full goalie gear for hours. Ritter's eyes were still off, pupils still way too large, but his face had warmed by degrees, no longer quite so alien.

"How long are you going to be doing this?" Elias asked.

Ritter responded by grabbing him around the shoulders and pulling him in for a sideways hug, pressing his nose into the top of Elias's head. He was damp with sweat and definitely smelled like it too, and Elias had literally just showered.

"Oh. Geeze. Thanks."

He couldn't be certain, but he was pretty sure that the shaking meant that Ritter was laughing at him.

They stayed like that for a few hours. Every once in a while, Elias would insist that Ritter let him stand up to stretch his legs and move around. Ritter would grumble and bitch every time, but he actually moved when told. When Elias wanted to get food or a drink from the lounge, Ritter would be hovering right behind him the whole time, mask pulled down, brandishing his stick like someone was going to jump out and attack them at any moment.

Elias just responded by flipping up his mask and forcing a bottle of Gatorade into his hands.

It seemed to work well enough.

But as the evening wore on, Elias was getting more and more antsy.

"Look, I told you I wasn't spending all night here," he repeated for what had to be the tenth time. Ritter wasn't growling like he had earlier, but he just stood there in front of Elias in his full gear again, staring. Every time Elias made to get up, Ritter would block him with his stick and try to nudge him back towards the net.

Clearly their "conversation" earlier had only worked to a point.

"Dude. I'm serious. If you don't want to be stuck here, at least take the damn skates off and I'll drive you home, because you really shouldn't be driving right now. But I'm not staying here."

He once again tried to stand up, just to have Ritter poke at him with his stick again. Elias let out his own growl of frustration and was on the verge of yelling when Ritter dropped to his knees in front of him and flipped up his mask all in one motion.

Elias paused, surprised enough to give him a moment just to see where this was going.

He was expecting more of the awkward patting, or maybe the sniffing again.

He didn't plan on Ritter shucking off his glove and blocker, grabbing Elias's face in his hands, and pressing their lips together.

"Mmf!" Elias's noise of surprise was lost against Ritter's mouth. For someone who was pretty much out of his mind right now, Ritter's movements were slow and sure, taking advantage of Elias's surprise to slip his tongue into Elias's mouth. He kissed Elias deeply, desperately, a last-chance audition and a final request.

When Ritter ended the kiss he bumped their foreheads together and stroked Elias's jaw with his thumbs, the bottom of his mask pressing against Elias's head. Elias couldn't even focus on it, caught in Ritter's gaze again.

He swore it was different even now, changing by the moment. That wildness was there, but it was tempered with something heated and intelligent, desperate, wanting.

Ritter crooned quietly and rubbed their noses together, and Elias couldn't leave him there.

"We can go to yours or mine," he said. "I won't leave you alone, but we still aren't staying here."

Ritter just kept nuzzling against him, one hand petting over Elias's hair, but when Elias moved to stand up, this time Ritter let him.

"Come on. I'll let you take the gear with you, but you're not wearing it in the car. Skates stay here." Elias held a hand out to him. After eyeing it cautiously for a few seconds, Ritter took it.

It looked like they had a deal.

Actually convincing Ritter to shower and get changed was an ordeal, particularly because he was essentially refusing to do it unless Elias was present for all of it so that Ritter could keep an eye on him. Elias was no stranger to seeing his teammates naked and showering, but it was a little different when it was his goaltender who had recently become very possessive over him and had just decided to kiss him out of nowhere.

Elias spent the whole time blushing very hard and resolutely keeping his back turned.

He pretty much had to confiscate Ritter's gear to keep him from trying to put it back on, shoving it all in his gear bag before he'd finished toweling off. Ritter was sulky about it, but he pulled on a pair of sweats after some grumbling. He also apparently thought that a lack of net to keep Elias in meant that he had an obligation to be particularly handsy, because he spent most of the trip to Elias's car hanging off his shoulders or waist, and on at least one occasion Elias had to slap his hand away from his ass.

It took a stupid amount of effort to get Ritter shoved in the passenger seat of his car, and even more to try to figure out what, exactly, he should do with him.

They had the next day off, and a game the following day. Most goalies nested for three days, but there was some variability to it. It was possible that Ritter would be mostly back to normal by the game in two days, though there was no way they'd be able to put him on the ice.

Or it was possible that Ritter would be one of those anomalous cases who nested for up to a week, like the rumors had always said about Tuukka Rask.

Elias chanced a glance in Ritter's direction. Ritter was still staring at him, unblinking, and it was just unnerving enough that Elias decided he wasn't going to look at him again until he had to.

"I guess we'll go to your place," he said slowly. It would be better for Ritter to be in a familiar environment, right? Making a nest had to be easier in your own space.

Elias only vaguely knew where Ritter lived, and so he had to text Smitty for the address.

 _Wtf you need to know that? He's at the rink he's safe_ , Smitty replied.

_uhhh...long story short no_

_What do you mean no?_

Elias just found it easier to take a picture of Ritter sitting next to him in the car. Ritter was still staring fixedly at him. Elias thought it expressed the situation fairly well.

_WTF WHY IS HE IN A CAR WITH YOU?_

_bc im taking him home! he didnt want me to leave him. look ill explain later ok?_

_You fucking better_ , Smitty sent, but he followed it with Ritter's address.

While he was at it, Elias decided to forward that address to Hanny, because he was mildly more responsible than Johnny and Mony.

_fyi if nobody can find me im trapped or dead at ritters place_

_WTF?_  Hanny immediately replied. Elias didn't bother to respond, instead setting up his phone to take him to Ritter's address.

"You'd better not make me regret this," he muttered as he pulled out of his parking space.

Ritter didn't say anything. He couldn't tell if that made things better or worse.

~~~

Elias wasn't sure what he'd expected from Ritter's apartment, but he probably should have foreseen the nest already set up in the living room. Ritter didn't have a net, but he did have spare goalie equipment mixed in with pillows and more blankets than Elias had really expected a single adult male to own.

Well. Goalies probably did have to plan ahead.

After having seen the nest, he did expect it when Ritter gently prodded his back.

"Of course, you have a perfectly good bed, why don't we just sit on the floor?" Elias grumbled.

The weird chuffing sound that Ritter made was almost like he was laughing.

He pressed Elias down into the nest and started fussing with the blankets, just like before. This time Elias just sighed and leaned back against the couch being used to structure the nest, closing his eyes.

"When this fucks up my back, I'm blaming you," he said.

A pillow was wedged under his back a moment later, and a kiss was pressed to the top of his head.

When he cracked an eye open, Ritter was sitting in front of him, his back facing Elias. His goalie mask had made a stunning reappearance, and he had his stick laid across his lap as if in preparation to ward off intruders.

Elias poked at Ritter's hip with his toe; without looking, Ritter reached back and patted his foot.

He snorted and closed his eyes again. He'd slept in worse situations before.

~~~

It was actually...not awful to spend the next day trapped at Ritter's. Not that he was literally trapped, because he was fairly sure Ritter would let him leave if he insisted on it, but the guilt of abandoning his goalie in his time of need was evidently a jail of its own.

Not that Ritter made it too difficult. There wasn't much that Elias had planned to do on his day off that he couldn't do at Ritter's. He watched Netflix and messed around on his phone and called his parents. Ritter did some weird ritualistic patrol of his apartment every twenty to thirty minutes (in helmet, blocker and glove, but thankfully without the pads), peeking around the curtains and checking the lock on the door. At the end of each lap he'd come back and check on Elias, prodding different parts of the nest with his stick like its structural integrity might have somehow changed in the last few minutes.

For a guy who'd been trying to attack his teammates yesterday and was presently fairly paranoid, Ritter was actually almost...sweet.

Cooking was outside of his present abilities, which really didn't shock Elias at all, but Ritter was doing his best to provide for Elias with boxes of saltines and bags of baby carrots and all of the purple Gatorade he could ask for.

He also kept up with the kissing thing, which Elias really had no way to address. As far as he recalled, Eddie had been cuddly when he nested, but hadn't been kissing everyone. And Ritter certainly hadn't acted like he wanted to be kissing the rest of their teammates, seeing as the last time he'd seen them, he'd been gnashing his teeth and threatening to beat them with his stick.

But he kept kissing Elias's forehead, his cheek. He kissed Elias on the lips if he thought he was complaining too much, and it was honestly pretty fucking great, enough so that Elias didn't even mind that much that he was clearly being kissed to shut him up.

It still didn't make a lot of sense why Ritter would start doing this now, seeing as he'd pretty much never given Elias a second glance before. They weren't  _not_  friends, but they weren't any closer than any other teammates. Elias was fairly sure they'd never spent time together without other teammates around.

Which begged the question of if this was something that was only happening because Ritter's weird nesting brain had decided that kissing Elias was a way to convince him to stick around. And the reason why he'd singled out Elias in particular to be his nesting buddy or whatever was still a mystery.

Ritter was less than forthcoming with this information, of course, but it didn't stop Elias from asking. He got used to throwing ideas out there and having Ritter ignore him, or just blink at him uncomprehendingly.

Smitty said that they didn't usually remember a whole lot from their nesting period, when Elias had finally called him to explain what happened.

"It's like a whole different part of your brain is running," he said, "Your instincts are calling the shots. When you come back to yourself, everything else is just as faded as the instincts. You have...impressions of what happened, but the specifics are foggy."

"So he doesn't know what he's doing," Elias said slowly.

He wasn't sure how to interpret the noise that Smitty made. "He knows what he's doing, but the part of him that's aware of what he's doing isn't the part of him that you're used to dealing with. If that makes sense."

It did and it didn't, but all of it added up to Ritter probably not really wanting a...a whatever-this-was with Elias.

Which shouldn't have been an issue, because up until a day ago Elias hadn't thought Ritter was into guys and hadn't even seen him as a distant possibility.

But now that he'd had the absent kisses and the stupid blanket nests and the dumb noises, it felt like it would be sad to lose them.

And that was fucking stupid, because those things weren't Ritter anyway. They were Nesting Ritter, and Nesting Ritter would be going away in the next day or two, possibly never to return.

Smitty said something about instinctual behavior not contradicting your true intentions but amplifying them, but Elias had tuned him out by that point.

Basically, he had no way of predicting what was going to happen when Ritter came back to himself, but he could guess that things were probably going to go back to normal.

Which wasn't a bad thing. Elias could definitely deal with normal.

It also just kind of sucked, because now he'd gotten attached to Ritter in a way that you weren't supposed to be attached to your goalie.

Well, whatever. There was nothing more he could do about it.

That's what he repeated to himself that night when Ritter tried to fucking tuck him in with a kiss and a Czech Extraliga jersey.

"Another day, right bud?" he asked. "Then we'll be back to normal?"

Ritter stroked his fingers over the scruff on Elias's jaw and made that weird crooning noise again. The he stood up and tapped Elias on the top of the head with his goalie stick.

He figured that was probably the best answer he was going to get.

~~~

For some reason, Elias actually thought that this new, less-aggressive Ritter was going to last through morning skate the next day.

He was really fucking wrong, which became evident as soon as they pulled in at the arena.

Ritter was already on edge, his growling becoming a steady background noise as he fidgeted and reached for the stick that Elias had once again confiscated in his gear bag. He kept looking around them, constantly scanning for new threats, and it didn't take a genius to figure that he was trying to steer Elias back towards the nest they'd left here.

"Not happening," Elias said, moving in the direction of the dressing room despite all of Ritter's grumbling and prodding. "I don't care what you do, but I'm going to skate."

The sound Ritter made was comically wounded. That was probably the last comical thing that happened.

Elias thought that he was pretty used to Ritter's noises by now, but it took him far too long to realize that he wasn't used to Ritter's silence. Ritter was always making noise, even if it was just quiet, wordless mumbles to himself.

When they walked into the dressing room, Ritter went silent. That was the first warning sign.

The second was when he froze in the middle of the room, watching as Elias went to his own stall but not taking a single step towards his own.

The third was when Mony clapped a hand on Elias's shoulder and said, "Hey man, you made it! Hanny told us you were going to die!"

He should have remembered that Ritter attacking Mony was what had started this whole mess.

When Ritter took a run at Mony, the only saving grace was that he didn't have a stick easily accessible to beat him with.

It was a small comfort, seeing as the way he bared his teeth seemed to indicate that he was more than comfortable with biting.

"What the fuck!" Mony caught Ritter by the shoulders and shoved him back. Ritter's hands were curled like claws and he raged at Mony like he wanted to gauge his eyes out. Guys were shouting, and more than one were trying to pull Ritter back, but it was like a switch had been flipped.

There was absolutely nothing in his eyes.

Elias knew he'd been the one to start this, however inadvertently, and he knew it was his job to intervene. After how docile Ritter had been with him for the past twenty-four hours, he knew he'd probably be their best chance of calming him down.

"Ritter! Hey, man – David, hey!" He shoved his way between Mony and Ritter, trying to shield Mony with his body while Matty and Fro tried to hold Ritter back.

"David, calm the fuck down, the fuck are you-"

Elias had known that Ritter was lost in his rage – he'd seen his eyes, the way that he was lashing out indiscriminately. It was probably frustration in the end, the same way an overtired toddler started to tantrum. He needed to be in his nest, calm and private, and Elias had insisted on dragging him around town because he didn't want Ritter to be alone.

He knew the risks he was taking.

The hot brush of pain over his cheekbone didn't even register at first, even as he was raising a hand to press over it. When it began to sting at the contact he hissed, "Ah, fuck."

His fingers came away red.

When he looked up, Ritter was shaking – visibly, physically trembling, and making these quiet, soft whining noises, sounding increasingly distressed. He reached out a hand to touch Elias's face, but when Elias involuntarily flinched away from the touch, he  _cringed_.

"Oh, hey, look, no, it was an accident, we both know that. I know you didn't mean to..." Elias could feel the blood dripping down his cheek, and tried to surreptitiously locate a mostly-clean towel to mop it up.

He was sure it wasn't that bad – it really didn't even hurt that much – but then Coach walked in and said, "What the fuck happened here?"

And Ritter bolted.

Elias knew exactly where he was going – the only place that he would go right about now was to his nest – but that didn't make him feel any better. He'd have followed, but his teammates were holding him back, telling him to let one of the trainers clean him up first.

"You don't want to freak him out any more if you show up still all bloody," Nealer had said, like he was suddenly the reasonable one here.

In the end it really wasn't worth all the freaked out looks everyone was giving him. Ritter's nails – which Elias knew for a fact weren't very long at all – had left three shallow cuts across Elias's right cheek. Once it was cleaned up and a few butterfly bandages were applied, it didn't look like much more than a particularly large cat scratch. Elias had plenty of worse injuries to his face actually playing hockey.

Not that anyone listened to him when he tried to tell them that.

"I don't know what you've been doing with him, and I don't care," Coach said. "From my point of view, Ritter hurt you, and he tried to hurt Mony. You're both blacklisted, stay away from him. You already should have known better after practice the other day!"

"But he's comfortable with me!"

Elias's protests fell on deaf ears. As Coach put it, "If he was so comfortable with you, he wouldn't have tried to claw your eye out."

The front office issued a new rule that nobody other than training staff or other goalies were allowed to approach Ritter while he nested, and never alone.

"It's for everyone's safety," the party line went, "We want David to be comfortable, and right now what's comfortable for him is to be away from the rest of the team."

Elias knew for a fact that it was utter bullshit, but nobody cared what the guy who'd spent the last day and half with the nesting goalie had to say.

He could barely keep focused on the drills during morning skate, and it showed. His passes were sloppy, his reactions delayed. But he couldn't stop himself, not when he kept thinking about Ritter tucked in his nest, wondering if he was upset, or lonely, or blaming himself for what happened to Elias.

Wondering if Ritter even remembered what happened, or cared. He could have just latched onto Elias because Elias was convenient.

He wanted to test those theories, but it had been decided that a staff member had to be on hands at all times to make sure that nobody entered the room where Ritter was nesting to "disturb" him. Gillies had already been called up from Stockton as soon as they knew that Ritter had started nesting, so according to the training staff there was no reason to disturb Ritter for anything hockey-related.

Ritter was already in the midst of his third nesting day and probably wouldn't be at it for much longer, but it still made something in Elias's chest sink, imagining what he must be going through.

Nobody seemed to want to address that elephant in the room, or maybe they just didn't want to look at the bandages on Elias's cheek and know that their friendly, happy goaltender had caused it. Smitty was the only one with the balls to approach Elias about it.

"He's got less than a day," he said, giving voice to Elias's thoughts, "He might be a little distressed now, but he'll be fine by morning."

Elias didn't hear the soothing tone or placating words. He only latched onto one thing.

"He's distressed?"

Smitty's smile faltered.

"He'll be okay. I promise you, he's a tough guy, he'll be alright."

He patted Elias's knee and went back to his own stall.

Elias couldn't get those words out of his head for the rest of the day.

~~~

He played like shit that night, but that was okay, because so did everyone else. A 2-0 loss to the Red Wings that they would all like to erase from memory sooner rather than later.

On a normal day, Elias would be blaming himself for doing nothing to contribute, but today he was too busy blaming himself for making his goalie miserable.

One of the assistants from the equipment team had been stationed outside of the door to what Elias had come to think of as Ritter's nesting room. His job was ostensibly to steer press away from the area, but in practicality it was to keep the other players out – maybe especially Elias.

"He's settled in okay," he assured Elias, "They left him some food and he seems to be eating okay. I think he was asleep the last time they checked. He'll probably be back to himself by morning."

He smiled, like any of those things were what Elias wanted to hear when all he wanted to was to see Ritter with his own two eyes.

But there was nothing he could do, not without getting his ass in a bigger pile of trouble than he was already potentially in, and so Elias gritted his teeth and went to his car and tried to ignore how the bandages on his face pulled painfully.

It shouldn't have felt so weird to be getting into his car without Ritter there, but Elias still drove home feeling like something was missing.

~~~

They had practice again the next morning, optional skate with a nice long tape session to review all of their fuck-ups from the night before in hopes that they could correct them before tomorrow night's game.

Elias chose not to skate, instead spending a good chunk of the morning having the training staff put him through his paces in the weight room until he still felt like shit, but shit that was being mildly productive.

"Hey man, are you okay?" Johnny hissed to him as everyone was settling in for tape review. "You've seemed a little weird today."

At this point it didn't take a pair of functioning eyes to see that Elias was feeling "weird" today, nor was there any question as to why Elias felt that way, but he appreciated Johnny's poorly-timed attempt at subtlety.

"I'll be fine," he said, because it felt more truthful than saying that he was fine now.

The last of the guys were filing in, looks of resigned dread already settled into their eyes, when Ritter slipped in just as the door was closing.

He looked exhausted, dark bags plainly visible under his eyes, and he was walking as if hunched in on himself, trying to avoid notice.

Suddenly, he was the only thing that Elias could notice.

"Is Ritter done nesting?" he hissed.

Johnny, bless him, didn't have the tact to realize that indulging Elias's newfound fixation on Ritter probably wasn't what Coach would have appreciated. And that was why Elias loved him.

"Oh, yeah. I think he's been getting cleared by the medical staff. I guess he woke up this morning feeling pretty much back to normal? It's so freaky how they can just do that. I can't imagine just, like, losing it for a few days."

Elias hummed, clearly not giving Johnny his full attention as he looked over at Ritter, trying to catch his eye.

Ritter didn't look up once, taking a seat in the back and crossing his arms over his chest.

It was agonizing to sit through a special extended edition of their regular video review sessions, especially when Elias knew that he really needed to be paying attention and that, at the same time, there was absolutely zero chance that he as going to be able to pay attention.

He bolted for Ritter as soon as they were dismissed, ignoring Johnny's look of surprise, because he was sure Johnny would be the only one surprised by what he was doing.

"Hey, how are you?" he asked breathlessly. He didn't fail to notice that he'd essentially had to step in front of Ritter to keep him from trying to flee.

Ritter wouldn't meet his eyes, or really any part of his face above his chin.

"I'm fine. Tired. I should go."

Elias had prepared himself for a response like that, and it was the only thing that kept him from wilting on the spot.

"Look, can we talk?"

He hadn't, on the other hand, quite prepared himself for the way that Ritter winced. For a quick moment, so quick that Elias wouldn't have noticed it if he wasn't in the newfound habit of looking at Ritter's eyes, Ritter glanced at Elias's face and then flicked his gaze away.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what he didn't want to look at. Knowing what was probably about to come, Elias put his hand on Ritter's forearm, light enough that it could be shaken off.

"Please?"

He didn't know if it was the touch or the plea that did it, but Ritter swallowed visibly and nodded.

Elias didn't even realize where he was leading them until Ritter made a soft noise of surprise.

"Oh." Elias grimaced, a little chagrinned as he looked at the door to Ritter's nesting room. "Would it be too weird to do it here?"

He immediately wished he'd phrased that differently, but part of him was oddly satisfied with the way that Ritter's face was flushing.

"This is fine," Ritter mumbled, but he stopped as soon as he got inside the door, like he didn't want to get any closer to the nest.

The nest itself was in a state of disarray. It looked like somebody had already begun dismantling it, starting with collecting up the jerseys, probably to be laundered. The spare goalie equipment had been sorted out and set against one wall. The nest now consisted of a mess of pillows and blankets thrown over the spare net, not nearly as well-arranged as they'd been when Elias had last seen them.

He had to wonder if the nest had been torn up like this before or after Ritter finished nesting.

"So, you want to talk?" Ritter mumbled. Elias wasn't sure he'd ever seen him look so uncomfortable before. There was always something so confident about him that was abruptly missing.

"Uh, yeah, I think we should. Given..." Elias waved his hand around. "What happened."

Ritter was still resolutely avoiding his eyes, and Elias could only put up with that for so long.

"You could at least look at me. You were doing a lot more than just looking before."

And that wasn't totally fair, because it gave an implication that more happened than it really did, and he knew that Ritter's memory probably wasn't the best. Ritter's cheeks pinked up all over again, but Elias couldn't be sure what conclusions he'd been making.

"I know," Ritter mumbled, his eyes flicking back and forth over Elias's face. He winced as his gaze finally settled on his cheek.

"I hurt you."

Oh, for fuck's sake.

"I'm fine." Elias held up a hand to forestall any protests. "Seriously, I'm fine, it's barely a scratch. Everyone overreacted. You weren't even aiming for me."

He paused, and then added, "Why'd you hate Mony so much anyway?"

Ritter looked away again, rubbing the back of his head. "I don't hate Mony. I don't hate anyone. I just..."

He shrugged helplessly. "It felt like I need him to back off, you know?"

Maybe a few days ago Elias wouldn't have known, but right now, he felt like he kind of got it.

"And me?"

He wanted to elaborate –  _why me, what was special about me, why did you want me around, did you mean how you acted with me_  – but Ritter seemed to hear him clearly all the same.

"You're..." He kept looking away, eyes never settling in one place, until Elias took a page from his book and cupped Ritter's face in his hands, forcing him to make eye contact. And Ritter let himself be moved, hands loosely cupped around Elias's wrists – not removing them, just...there.

"You seem like a good nest mate," Ritter said. He did that damnable one-shouldered shrug again, and Elias would have dropped his hands if Ritter wasn't holding his arms now, slowly running one thumb over the pulse point on his wrist.

“So it was random chance, then." Elias couldn't phrase it as a question, not when the words were suddenly so bitter in his mouth.

Ritter frowned, still unconsciously massaging his wrist.

"No? How would it- I would not..." He trailed into a small growl of frustration, and it was so familiar that Elias couldn't help a small smile.

"Not used to using your words?"

Ritter's smile was helpless and relieved. "Growling is much easier."

"I'm sure. You did a lot of it." Elias didn't know where this was going, but it felt easy, and flirtatious, and he didn't want to stop.

"You understood it fine. Not everyone does. You are..." He huffed, struggling to find the words in their shared language.

Finally, Ritter met Elias's eyes again and shrugged a third time. "Instincts tell me you are a good nest mate. Instincts are never wrong. But, instincts are me, so if instincts say you are a good nest mate..."

He eyed Elias slowly, watching him carefully as if willing him to put it together.

And, for once, he kind of felt like he got it.

"If your instincts say it, then they're probably just projecting what the rest of you was already thinking." When Ritter nodded, he said, "So that means..."

Elias watched as Ritter slowly shifted his hand so that it was cupping his cheek, delicately running his thumb over the bandages.

"My instincts let me in on little secret that I like you. And I do stupid things because of it. Like hurting my teammates."

It took a moment to compute that one. "You were  _jealous_  of  _Mony_?"

He would have laughed if Ritter didn't look so embarrassed. "I just remember being mad. Like I say, stupid things."

Ritter's hand really was warm on his face, and Elias had one more chance if he wanted to feel that again any time soon.

"And kissing me?"

If he'd thought Ritter was blushing before, it had nothing on how red he turned now.

"Instincts say I should kiss you," he mumbled, glancing down. "A lot. To make you happy."

Just for a second, his eyes flicked up to Elias's.

"Did it work?"

He looked so nervous, trying so damn hard to be smooth after three days of his body dragging him through hell, and Elias couldn't help the smirk he could feel curling the edges of his mouth.

"I don't know, do you want to try again and find out?"

Ritter's eyes lit up, and Elias swore in that moment as Ritter brought their faces closer together, slowly obscuring his view, that he saw something flash in Ritter's eyes. Something different, separate, a little wild and untamed, but this time wholly familiar

Elias wasn't scared of those eyes anymore.

He tightened his grip on Ritter's face and pulled him down the rest of the way until their lips met.

And when they kissed, it was pure instinct.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [swedishgoaliemafia on Tumblr](https://swedishgoaliemafia.tumblr.com/).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] and burned into the dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20185678) by [AerPods (Aer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aer/pseuds/AerPods)




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